Monday, August 6, 2018

US influence on the global economy has been gradually falling, and emerging economies like China and India can overtake the US as global leaders, according to Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

“The US as an empire against the rest of the world peaked in 1950s or 1960s. Then, there have been other countries that have become more powerful, in particular China and now increasingly India. The US empire and its influence on the world is diminishing and has been diminishing for quite some time,” he told RT. The trade war may accelerate this “mutation” in the global economic balance “with other countries becoming more important and the US less important,”Faber said.

According to Faber, the US is likely to be the biggest loser from the trade war it started. “The winners in a real trade war would be everyone except the US. The Europeans would trade more with Asia, and the Asians would trade more with Europe than the US. There would be more trade between the emerging economies and China and vice versa,” Faber said.

Another winner from the trade would be Russia since China would buy more resources from the country, while Moscow would buy more from Beijing, he said.

The US stock market has thus far ignored the news about the global trade war, Faber notes. “But if there is trade war, it is not good for the global economic growth. The global economy is slowing down already. I think it would be a big mistake to go ahead with the trade war.”

The countries most exposed to the trade war in emerging markets are Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina, due to their fiscal problems, growing deficits, and weak currencies amid large amounts of foreign debt, Faber said.

With the global economy financed by soaring debt since the last global crisis of 2008-2009 another recession is likely to come, but its shape is not yet known, according to the investor.

Despite the recent strength of the US dollar, especially against the currencies of emerging economies, Faber says the trend will not continue in the long run. He says the best way to protect individual investments in times of turmoil is to diversify the portfolio with cash, bonds, precious metals, and real estate.

Thursday, August 2, 2018

Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, said he would not be surprised if Indian markets corrected 20% from current levels, but did not give a timeline for such a correction. In a phone interview from Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Swiss investor expressed concerns over the trade war, and said it is not beneficial to anyone.

What do you think could be the repercussions of global trade war on the world economy and markets?

There is less or hardly any growth in Europe. The Chinese economy has been slowing down, as well as other Asian economies. The US stock market by any measure is highly priced.

We have recessions in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey. We have currency weaknesses around the globe in dollar terms, which is a sign of monetary tightening, and now we have also this so-called trade war. Some people may suffer more, and some less but a trade war cannot be beneficial for anyone. In general, it is not a positive for the global economy or the financial markets.

Indian markets recorded new high today (Thursday). Do you think the rally in India is sustainable or do you think there is a correction in the offing for benchmark equity indices?

When (Indian) market hit a high earlier this year in January, my sense was that high would be an important one, but we made a new high.

Let’s put it this way, when I travel around the world and I visit financial institutions, first time India is really a subject. For the first time, investors think that India has an experience and a meaningful fundamental improvement due to the Modi government. They are not sure if it is the right time to invest now in India. Over the next 10 years, we want to have some money in India, regardless.

If you look at the S&P (500), and Indian stock market over the next 10 years, you will make more money in India than American shares. This has been my view for the last three years, and this remains my view.

Of course, if the global stock markets are going down— all the major markets, except India are going down. When everything is weak, and India is still strong, I will be reluctant to buy the market which is strong. It (rally) may last a little bit longer but it doesn’t mean it is good value. Valuations are not attractive other than a few exceptions.

How do you see it faring from here?

The bull market in India started in late 2015, We have seen a big move, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a 20% correction. I cannot give you a date though.

If you put all your money now in Indian stocks, the reward in my opinion will not be great, as there are internal and external risks.

Sunday, July 29, 2018

It's unfortunate that "hate speech" arbitrarily defined and dictated by the left is suppressing free speech and the search for objective truth. "Thank God white people populated America," uttered by Marc might have been said in a less offensive manner, but to remove the truth-seeking thoughts of a freedom-loving, non-racist intellectual of Dr. Faber's stature is unconscionable and ultimately destructive, most of all to minorities.

We are delighted to have Dr. Faber with us to discuss the global markets as he once did on all major business channels, at Barron's, and other mainstream print media. We ask Marc about Trump's economic policies, global monetary policy, stocks, bonds and precious metals, geopolitics, dollar hegemony, the Petro yuan, and much more.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Eric King: “I know you’ve had some issues coming into the United States, where you’ve been in an airport where they have taken you to the side and put you in a room (Dr. Faber laughs), which seems preposterous. But this move to more of a police state in the West, does that have you concerned?”

Dr. Marc Faber: “Well, that is another possibility, that we go more to a fascist regime rather than to socialism. That is a possibility that we need to entertain. And it is very clear to me, having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, that today there is much more control of what you and I do. It’s stricter and more unpleasant…

We have far more regulations, far more laws, that actually are very negative for the small businessman, from which actually the economy grows the most. That also has a negative impact on growth. I would say whatever scenario you look at, the only scenario that could boost growth, briefly, substantially, would be war.”

Saturday, July 21, 2018

A big difference between the market today and that of the 1987 crash is unfunded pensions. Renowned investor Dr. Marc Faber, who holds a PhD in economics, says, “The unfunded liabilities have gone up. They did not go down...

Friday, July 13, 2018

"The rupee will be at these levels, maybe a rupee here or there. I don’t see rupee going to 75-76 to the dollar and there is no reason why it should. We have $400 billion of reserves and we are the most investible country.

We have never had any defaults, our track record is tremendous compared to other emerging markets and our levels of debt are nothing as compared to China. So on all those parameters, I think India is doing well and will do well.

Always remember, Marc Faber, one of the gurus of emerging markets, he always said one thing, the locals know best."

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

One of the staggering developments from the mad money world of stock markets is that US stocks rose overnight, with the Dow Jones index up over 180 points, as the deadline to President Trump’s trade war looms today. And what’s even more surprising is that some professionals reckon the market has priced in the effects of a trade war!

Gee I hope they’re right, but I don’t know how I or anyone could really test that.

This confidence that market experts know what lies ahead was captured by this from Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities: “Any news we get on trade in the short term will be neutral or good,” he said. “We already know all the bad news that's out there on this issue.” (CNBC)

What he’s saying is that experts on the significant companies affected by a tit-for-tat trade war have worked out the profit effects of tariffs and then changed their valuation on that company. But those calculations operate off assumptions that might end up being wrong!

This is how the trade war should begin, with a U.S. Trade Representative statement saying tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods will take effect at 12:01 a.m. in Washington. Then China will return fire immediately. The assumption is that China will hit back with equal force. But what if they don’t, instead hitting harder than expected and on industries that were not expected to be affected?

All’s fair in love and war. And you can’t expect that a trade war will be fought out following some gentlemanly rules of engagement. Mind you, I hope it is, and I also hope the market experts have calculated the effects accurately. But I always argue that hope is not a strategy upon which you can build wealth in the stock market!

What worries me about this complacency on the trade war is that it comes when the doomsday drones are ganging up to ramp their warnings about an imminent recession and stock market sell off.

You shouldn’t be surprised about this, as since the end of the GFC this mob has tipped a Great Depression, countless market crashes and some have even had the Dow Jones plummeting below 10,000 while it’s now over 24,300!

Donald Trump has been seen as the trigger, with this one from Bloomberg showing how the negative nervous Nellies have been scaring us for some time: "Citigroup: A Trump Victory in November Could Cause a Global Recession!" (Bloomberg Financial News headline, August 2016)

And then this one: "A President Trump Could Destroy the World Economy!” (Washington Post editorial, October 2016).

Then there have been the likes of Harry Dent and Marc Faber who have been tipping a market Armageddon for at least three years, probably longer. These guys will get it right one day, after being wrong for a long time. And this trade war could be the trigger for them being free to boast about their insights.

All this comes at a time when investor surveys show that those playing the stock market are losing confidence. And some well-known fund managers have expressed their concerns about being long stocks, with the likes of Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio saying he’s getting out of financial assets.

“It’s a classical late cycle story. So, when I was here last time, I said we were long and nervous. We are no longer long, we are increasingly nervous about this,” Roelof Salomons, chief strategist at Kempen Capital Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

A late cycle represents an economy that has been growing, but is poised to fall into a recession, amid rising interest rates, lower profit margins and other negative economic headwinds.

And a trade war could be a cyclone, while the experts are treating it more like a zephyr. I’m gambling that these guys and their assessments are right because I think the current economic and corporate profitability stories are so strong. But I know I’m gambling.

If you can’t afford to gamble and see stock prices slide, then you might have to play it safer than me. But let’s all pray that this trade war doesn’t prove some Trump-haters right.

Friday, July 6, 2018

Dr. Marc Faber was born in Zurich, Switzerland and obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Zurich. Between 1970 and 1978, Dr. Faber worked for White Weld & Company Limited in New York, Zurich and Hong Kong. From 1978 to February 1990, he was the Managing Director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK) Ltd. In 1990, he set up his own business, Marc Faber Limited which acts as an investment advisor and fund manager.

Dr. Faber publishes a widely read monthly investment newsletter, “The Gloom Boom & Doom Report,” which highlights unusual investment opportunities, and is the author of several books including Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s age of discovery which was a best seller on Amazon. Dr. Faber is known for his “contrarian” investment approach and charismatic personality. He became infamous after calling the 1987 crash in US equities.

Nomi Prins is an American author, journalist, and Senior Fellow at Demos. She has worked as a managing director at Goldman-Sachs and as a Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns, as well as having worked as a senior strategist at Lehman Brothers and analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Prins is known for her books All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power and Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Renown Swiss investor and publisher of "The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report" Dr. Marc Faber discusses the global markets, housing and bond bubbles, central bank manipulation, gold, Trump, the petroyuan, the New Silk Road and what a potential conflict between the U.S. and China might look like as old empires die and new ones are born.

"I think it may very well come from a credit event. Or, it may come from the disclosure of a major fraud. Or, it may come because interest rates start to go up," he said.

For now, it appears the rally isn't cracking. The S&P 500 has had 36 record closes this year. The Dow has done even better.

"In 2009 when stocks bottomed out, I can tell you that not many people saw why stocks would go up," Faber said. "Now it's the opposite. The sky is clear. Corporate profits have been expanding — they're good. Interest rates are low, but valuations are very high."

Monday, June 18, 2018

My co-host and I interview Dr. Marc Faber to discuss his views on the global economy, emerging markets, and the trade war.

An underlooked risk Marc mentions lies in the voting patterns of milennials.

Marc also tells us what his biggest trading mistake was and his unusual work schedule.

Marc Faber joins us as a special guest on this show, and it makes for a great conversation on markets, the economy, why the rent is too high in California, his advice for milennials, and his unusual sleep schedule. We also discuss the US-China trade negotiations, its impact on other emerging market economies, and what catalysts could possibly cause the market momentum to shift directions.

Friday, June 1, 2018

Marc Faber of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report has some alarming things to say about how America’s foreign policies may have disastrous implications for the U.S. and global economies, and for the dollar.

He also weighs in on which asset class, crypto-currencies or precious metals, will ultimately will be the major benefactor of all of the pending geopolitical unrest. Don’t miss a tremendous interview with Dr Doom, Marc Faber, coming up after this week’s market update.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Marc Faber says the U.S. Dollar’s strength will not last long. “The last thing the U.S. administration wants today is to have a strong Dollar.”

Right now, investors are geared towards equities and cryptocurrencies. However, Faber expects within a few years investors will turn towards gold and silver. Faber does not have faith in most cryptocurrencies.

While he says blockchain technology is here to stay, he thinks the vast majority of cryptocurrencies will fail.

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

In this wide ranging interview, Jason asks Marc about asset price volatility, whether the stock market is topping, central bank balance sheets and whether they can be meaningfully reduced, the credit bubble in China, the US vs China trade war, and the popularity of crypto currencies in Asia.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

With global markets struggling for direction after a rocky start to the year, Dr Doom has been conspicuously absent from the conversation. Investment adviser Marc Faber, 72, who adopted the nickname in 1987 after a newspaper column highlighted his contrarian outlook on markets, has had a quiet six months.

Faber – a once regular guest on business news shows such as CNBC’s Squawk Box and Bloomberg Television – has faded from view since the publication of his October newsletter The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report for comments that were condemned as racist. This included a passage where Faber used offensive racial references in laying out a bleak picture for the US if its early immigration flows had been from Africa rather than Europe. He has since been dropped from the booking lists for programmes at Fox News and CNBC, according to Reuters.

At the time, Faber told Canada’s Global & Mail he stood by the remarks, saying in an email exchange that he did not regret writing the passage and that he had a free right to express his views.

When This Week in Asia spoke to Faber at his suite at the Grand Hyatt in Hong Kong this year, he sounded resigned to the loss of his appearances on business television.

“Everything in life and the universe has a timeline, it is transient. In other words, what you have today, you may not have tomorrow,” Faber said.

Known for a keen interest in history, and the works of innovators such as Russian “wave theory” economist Nikolai Kondratiev, Faber has slipped from the public spotlight just as global markets have entered a period of heightened volatility...

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

The tariffs are going to backfire on the US very badly because you have to understand that the US was economically very powerful until the early 1980s. The same was the time in the 70s and early 80s. If America sneezes, Asia catches the cold because all the exports went to America. But this is no longer the case nowadays. Take steel. 2% of US steel imports are from China and only 1.5% of Chinese production of steel is exported to the US.

Even if the US would not buy any steel at all from China, it would not matter to the Chinese. At the time of Davos in February, a Chinese owner of the world’s largest bus company was interviewed and they asked him about US tariffs and chances of trade war with US. He said we really do not care. We export our buses to 150 different countries in the world, what do we care about the American market and that is true for many companies. The American market is no longer that relevant. China exports more to commodity producers than to the US and the same applies to the South Korea.

What has changed in the last 30-40 years is that whereas Asia and the world was American centric before, the world has become much more China centric in Asia and it is a much more multi-dimensional global economy where the US has lost a lot of its importance, relatively speaking. It has also lost the lot of prestige because of their failed interventions in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in Afghanistan, everything they touched, they messed up.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

In terms of interest rates, historically, our standards have been at the lowest level in the history of mankind from say 3000 BC up to now. So, in 5,000 years of history, we have never been this low. In the US, the low for the 10 years treasury was at 1.37% in July 2016 and in Europe, in many cases, there have been negative interest rates.

Recently, that has moved up a little bit but in Switzerland and in Japan, basically we still have negative interest rates and we have had them essentially for the last eight-nine years. This is a very unusual situation. I do not think anyone could expect interest rate to stay this low for much further. There is a rising tendency but recently the treasury bonds in the US have sold off quite considerably and I believe that we could have one more decline in interest rates as a result of a recession that may happen later on this year or next year. So, I actually went long on some treasury bonds in the US.

Concerning global trade, you are right. The idea was that multinationals in Europe and especially in the US could open up new markets like China and then sell their goods into these markets. But conditions have somewhat changed in the sense that it is the Chinese and other emerging economies that sold their goods into the US.

So to some extent, it backfired on the US and as you know the US is not the fair player and they reacted negatively. These trade sanctions or trade barriers, in my view are not very negative for China and other countries. Rather they are very negative for the US. This is my assessment of the situation.

Thursday, April 26, 2018

There is a lot of liquidity here in Asia. But offsetting that, there is also a lot of debt and the debt level in the world nowadays as a percent of the economy is more than 50% higher than it was in 2007 before the crisis occurred. We had this modest economic expansion since June 2009 but it was driven by money printing and credit and we have reached probably the level of credit where additional credit will not do much good.

India from a longer term point of view is still a good proposition but India is not exactly a problem-free country. There is leverage in the system and there has been fraud and there are still some unsettled political events that may happen.

I would say given that the market has actually rallied very strongly over the last few years and that we have reached a high at 36400 on January 29th , we could easily decline by around 20% from the highs that would take us below 30000. Long term, I am optimistic but we have to realise that if one asset class goes down, fund managers will also sell another one even though the fundamentals may be favourable but they just get out and build up their liquidity because on institutional side, the funds are holding very little liquidity. So, they may build up liquidity and that can then bring about selling pressure everywhere.

I do not think that dynamics have changed a lot. I still have a view that over the next 10 years, you will make more money in India than say in the US. In fact, looking at the various economies around Asia and the world, I would feel reasonably confident to say that India has a growth potential of say approximately 6% per annum which to Indians may not sound a lot but that is much better than the Europe and the US.

I do not think that this is a problem. The problem in India is more that Modi has some difficulties in reducing the still enormous bureaucracy. It may have improved somewhat but there’s still a lot of bureaucracy and there are still a lot of bad loans in the books of banks and then there is also the valuation issue. Blue chips in India sat at 40-50 times earnings. I do not consider that to be a low valuation. These factors could easily contribute to a big -- 20-30% disruption.

Monday, April 23, 2018

In an interview with ET Now, Marc Faber, The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, says long term, he is optimistic about India but if one asset class goes down, fund managers will also sell another one even though the fundamentals may be favourable.

Friday, April 13, 2018

My guest in this interview is Dr Marc Faber. Dr. Faber was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He went to school in Geneva and Zurich and finished high school with the Matura.

He studied Economics at the University of Zurich and, at the age of 24, obtained a PhD in Economics magna cum laude. Between 1970 and 1978, Dr Faber worked for White Weld & Company Limited in New York, Zurich and Hong Kong.

Since 1973, he has lived in Hong Kong. From 1978 to February 1990, he was the Managing Director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK) Ltd. In June 1990, he set up his own business, MARC FABER LIMITED which acts as an investment advisor and fund manager.

Friday, April 6, 2018

I was expecting a correction a long time ago. It has not happened but when it happens, it happens in a more severe manner. So far, it has not happened very severely in the US. We are down not even 10% from the January 26 high. In India, we are down about 10% from the January 29 highs but it is not yet a big correction by historical standards. A correction would be a 20% decline and the bear market would be something like a 40% decline. It is nothing very serious yet but it may become very serious in the future.

I was expecting a correction a long time ago. It has not happened but when it happens, it happens in a more severe manner. So far, it has not happened very severely in the US. We are down not even 10% from the January 26 high. In India, we are down about 10% from the January 29 highs but it is not yet a big correction by historical standards. A correction would be a 20% decline and the bear market would be something like a 40% decline. It is nothing very serious yet but it may become very serious in future.

In terms of interest rates, historically, our standards have been at the lowest level in the history of mankind from say 3000 BC up to now. So, in 5,000 years of history, we have never been this low.

In the US, the low for the 10 years treasury was at 1.37% in July 2016 and in Europe, in many cases, there have been negative interest rates...

Friday, March 30, 2018

Watch this segment to know what famous Swiss investor Marc Faber has to say about India and its economy. In an exclusive interview to Zee Business today, famous Swiss investor Marc Faber said that the Sensex can still fall over 20 per cent, slipping below the 30,000 mark.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Renown Swiss investor and publisher of "The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report" Dr. Marc Faber discusses the global markets, housing and bond bubbles, central bank manipulation, gold, Trump, the petroyuan, the New Silk Road and what a potential conflict between the U.S. and China might look like as old empires die and new ones are born.

Friday, February 16, 2018

First interview up, Louis Navellier of Navellier & Associates notes that the best corporate earnings in 6 years and tax cuts could spur forward the already lofty US equities markets in 2018.

Dividend yielding stocks may be preferable in 2018, but caution is advisable before chasing high yields, which only magnifies risk / volatility.

The host / guest concur that NVIDIA (NVDA) shares are appealing, due in part to record demand for their superior crypto-mining GPUs, a top holding of our guest. Louis Navellier also holds UCTT, Ultra Clean Holdings, and Chinese stocks in anticipation of the Morgan Stanley Chinese stock index update, including the Twitter of China, WEBCO, ticker WB. Another key holding, Align Technologies, ALGN, maker of the popular dental tool, Invisalign is in his portfolio.

Outside of the equities markets, our guest is also adding copper and lithium contracts amid the auto battery revolution, including FMC corp and Sociedad Quimica Y Minera (SQM). Next up, globally renowned economist and editor of the GloomBoomDoom report, Dr. Marc Faber returns with his outlook on the financial markets for 2018.

Due to excessive expansion, of central bank balance sheets, global equities prices may be overextended as robust economic conditions are heavily dependent on inflated asset prices, including real estate and cryptos. Investors will turn away from the bubble markets to the precious metals, which will likely be next to outperform competing asset classes.

Although the Bitcoin mania reached a fevered pitch recently, approaching a total market cap for of $1 trillion (entire sector), Dr. Faber suggests that cryptos could continue to gain popularity after the current correction and increase another 20 fold to $10 trillion, rivaling the $7 trillion gold market, due in part to the limited supply of the top digital coins (figure 1.1.). Case in point, during the month long Bitcoin correction, Ethereum, arguably the silver to Bitcoin's gold, advanced over 100%, offsetting much of the selling - sector rotation is oftentimes viewed as a sign of bull market indication.

Monday, February 12, 2018

According to Hugh Smith, "The core narrative of the Status Quo is that nothing fundamental needs to be changed: all the problems can be solved with more ‘free money’ (borrowed from the future at low rates of interest) and a few policy tweaks such as Universal Basic Income.

This core narrative is false: everything needs to change, from the bottom up. And that of course terrifies those gorging at the trough of status quo wealth and power."

Hugh Smith then discusses the theories of Peter Turchin. Peter Turchin is a Russian-American scientist, specializing in cultural evolution and the statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies.

His 2016 book Ages of Discord explains why we should be worried about the current course taken by American society and how we can use history to plan a better future. According to Turchin, "something happened to American society during the 1970s. Several previously positive social, economic, and political trends suddenly reversed their direction."

Turchin further explains that, "there were two periods in American history that were remarkably free of political violence: the Era of Good Feelings (the 1820s) and the post-war prosperity of the 1950s, which I termed the Era of Good Feelings II. After the quiet 1950s, however, incidents of political violence again became more frequent and now we may be in the middle of another wave of sociopolitical instability.

Waves of sociopolitical instability are characterized by:

1. An over-supply of labor that suppresses real (inflation-adjusted) wages

2. An overproduction of essentially parasitic Elites

3. A deterioration in central state finances (over-indebtedness, decline in tax revenues, increase in state dependents, fiscal burdens of war, etc.)"

I love the expression of "overproduction of essentially parasitic elites," which includes an oversupply of bureaucrats.

Fortunately, The pace of new regulation has visibly slowed in the Trump administration. A search of OMB’s database reveals that, between January and December 2017, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs concluded review of 21 ‘economically significant’ regulations - those with impacts (costs or benefits) expected to be $100 million or more in a year. There are indeed far fewer rules than previous presidents have issued in their first years.

The most impressive part is that some of these "significant" rules are actually designed to reduce red tape.

The S&P 500 has made history on a seemingly weekly basis with its record highs, but this unprecedented feat is about longevity. The index has gone for over 400 days without a 5% pullback, putting it at the longest streak on record, dating back to 1929, an infamous year no doubt.

But as Valerius observed in the first century A.D."The divine wrath is slow indeed in vengeance, but it makes up for its tardiness by the severity of the punishment."

Friday, February 9, 2018

The Indian market may correct by 20-30 per cent, but it is attractive to stay invested in the country for long-term, said Marc Faber, editor & publisher of “The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report in an exclusive interview with Zee Business.

Faber also pointed out that India has the potential to become the second or third largest economy in the world. Edited excerpts:

Your thoughts on Indian budget and its impact on market?

Indian budget has been a mixed bag. I don't think stock market in India has fallen just on account of Budget. I think other factors are at play too.

What is your take on re-introduction of long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax in India?

I am against any kind of tax, be it LTCG, STCG, excise duty, or Value added tax (VAT). I think one should try to keep the government as small as possible. Best way to keep the government small is not increasing taxation, because the more money you give to the government, the bigger it will grow to be.

Do you believe the correction in India will prolong?

Everybody says it's a correction, but it's a premature statement. We don't know yet. It may be a correction of 5 per cent, 10 per cent or even 20 per cent, but it could also be a beginning of something more serious that may pull down the market much more.

What is the probability of that?

In US, a bull market started essentially nine years ago in March 2009. We are up close to 4 times since then, and in the last two years we never had a correction of more than 5 per cent. After these conditions, it is not unlikely that the market will face some tough time. Market may decline by 40 per cent. I'm not saying it will happen. I say it could happen.

Do you suspect globally markets may lighten up a bit and lead to adversely impact India?

Indian markets have now the yields removed. I had said two years ago that Indian markets will outperform US markets over the next 10 years. Two years are gone. But it doesn't mean that US markets can't have a significant correction. In 1987, we have had a 40% correction, followed by recession, then market continued to go up until 2000. My sense is we had a nirvana condition for financial assets over the last 8-9 years. Bonds, stocks and practically every sector has rallied. Dollar was firm. All these conditions will change. It will be more challenging for investors.

In the case of India, it has had a big rally, and a correction is overdue. But it's attractive to stay in India for long-term. India has the potential to become the second or third largest economy in the world, but at the same time, the benchmark may dip by 20-30 per cent but there will be shares that will move up.

If indeed market corrects by 20-30% in India, within EM basket, where will you place India?

A year ago, my top pick was Vietnam, but now it is also due a significant correction.

Your question is not easy to answer. Markets world over are being manipulated by central banks keeping interest rates low. In India, RBI's relatively tight monetary policy has resulted into rupee being strong and stable against dollar over the last two years. The RBI deserves some positive marks. I believe Indian economy may not be super healthy, but compared to others, it's a reasonably good bet to own.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

It’s not boasting to state plainly that you were right if you are equally direct about your errors. I have until now rightly predicted all of the stock market’s major downturns, starting with the one in 2007 that gave us the Great Recession. The first of those led to the writing of this blog. The next two were predicted and recorded as they happened on this blog, and the latest, whether it proves right or wrong, waits shortly in the future. Each time I made such a prediction here, I bet my blog on it. The blog is still here, but will it continue to be?

I am using the term “crash” loosely in this article because one time I clearly stated the impending plunge would not technically amount to a crash (a sudden drop of more than 20%) but it would be much more significant than just a correction (a decline of 10%) because of how drastically it would change the nature of the market. I’ll show here how it did. The next time, I predicted a “crash” that did not quite turn out as significant as I claimed it would be, but it was an historic event in that the Dow fell further in January than it had ever done in its entire history, and it did so exactly the timing (to the day) that I laid out in advance.

I let myself off easy on that one as being both a hit and a miss because, after all, getting timing of a major plunge right to the exact day as well as the counter-intuitive manner by which it would start on that day is not something one typically sees.

Now we are about to see whether I will survive the prediction I made many months ago for January 2018.

This [prediction] is coming from someone who has not been crying the sky is falling for some time….. I won’t go as far as I did with the housing market [back in ’07] by predicting a stock-market crash based on the evidence at the moment, but I will say it is looking like a significant risk this fall, should other events trigger panic in stock investors who know they are heavily leveraged and who know everyone else is, too.

That bet sounds a little hedged, but it was merely reiterating what I had predicted in the early spring of that year:

I’m not predicting economic collapse in 2014 any more than I did last year. Some well-known talking heads did for 2013, especially related to China, and I said they’d be wrong. Marc Faber, Nouriel Roubini, and Jim Rogers all predicted that 2013 would bring a great crash, and I said that I did not think that was likely. While I’m not forecasting calamity in my 2014 economic predictions, it certainly looks like a stormy fall ahead of us as these pressures start to build against the global economy. (“Strong Headwinds Face Global Economy“)

In keeping with that earlier prediction, I concluded my September update for the rapidly approaching autumn months as follows:

I avoid sensationalism or market pessimism, but unlike bullish market optimists I will predict doom when doom really is on the horizon, but not before. I would move the needle on my gauge that monitors the likelihood of an economic crash this year from yellow to solidly orange where I predicted in the spring that it would be come fall.…

The sad tale to be seen in the market today is that we have learned nothing from the economic crash of 2008 and less than nothing from the high-tech crash at the beginning of the millennium. The market is wildly speculative on dot-com stocks and highly leveraged. It has huge potential to fall rapidly if something goes wrong because the investing is so highly leveraged (built out of debt). The market looks exactly like it did before the last bust of the dot-com bubble.Because it is such an unstable situation and because the headwinds that I forecasted last March have grown, the likelihood of that market toppling in the fall has increased.

Every force mentioned in my March forecast has built up in the directions predicted, bringing the risk level for this fall to exactly the precarious level I predicted. Remember, I bet my blog on things taking that direction this past March, promising I’d stop making forecasts if I was wrong about the direction these headwinds were taking us….

I maintain that bet while nearly everyone else is saying the economy has improved this year, and superficially it appears it has; but I am looking at the teetering state of the market and the growing forces of the winds that whirl around us and saying that those who think, based on statistics that the economy is recovering, are all looking in the wrong direction. They are not paying attention to the foundations of this structure, and they are not looking at the sheer forces that are ready to knock it off its wobbly foundation. The economy is, in fact, precariously weak, and the forces that could knock it over have grown increasingly strong.

The area in the yellow box below shows what happened less than two weeks after if I reiterated those strong warnings that things were about to go very bad:

I wrote and published the article two weeks before the big dip that took us into the yellow box in the graph above — a time which the author who published this graph now refers to as “a stealth bear market.” I would later write that, as far as I was concerned, the events that happened that fall broke the spine of the bull market completely (the Trump rally that ended the period in the yellow box being an entirely new phenomenon built on a different basis of speculation). As with the author who published the graph, I disagree with those who say this has all been one long bull market of recovery.

I think I was right about that fall with the perspective one gets when looking back from a distance. If you took all your money out of the stock market at the start of that yellow box, you could have kept it out of the market for almost two years, and you would have missed nothing but a bumpy ride to nowhere. The bull clearly broke its back with that first big plunge in the fall of 2014, never to recover without massive intrusion by a new force in the market.

Technically, the S&P fell 19% by the time that break finished playing out, so it missed becoming an officially declared bear market by a mere nick; but I think it is clear the market broke … like a hurricane that misses being named a hurricane by just one mile per hour. It’s a naming technicality that doesn’t change how bad the storm was. At any rate, I had been smart enough to stop myself short of saying the market would “crash” or that total calamity would hit the economy and had predicted, instead, that a market downturn of major significance was about to happen. Clearly it did, so I got to keep writing my blog.

Note that the massive change this event brought to the market was ONLY reversed by the momentous election of Donald Trump and the ensuing Trump Rally. You can see the exact point that happened near the end of the yellow zone above. Without that event, the market would still be churning sideways; but I never said the change I was predicting in 2014 would be apocalyptic or that the market would stay down forever.

As noted then, I also had not predicted anything dire for quite some time prior to that. (I’m not a permabear, always predicting doom and gloom until it happens.) It took a new major historic event to upset the country and extract us out of that seemingly endless sideways bounce and crawl of the “stealth bear” that had begun right when I said the market would break.

The ghost of a Christmas crash most recent

The next time I predicted a major downturn in the market was not until December of 2015 when I also bet my blog on the prediction coming true, and this time I was even more specific. Just a few hours before the Fed raised interest rates for the first time since the official part of the Great Recession, I wrote the following prediction:

Let me share something counter-intuitive. Whether the Fed raises interest rates or not, this Wednesday is D-day for the Fed’s economic recovery because the Fed is Damned if it does and Damned if it doesn’t. I’ll certainly show you why, but the counterintuitive part is that you can expect the market to crash upward as it leaves Wonderland and returns to reality.

Maybe I am a contrarian to contrarians because while I have taken the contrarian view that the recovery is an illusion, most contrarians appear to believe the stock market will crash as soon as the Fed raises rates. I take a counterintuitive view as being most likely. The market will most likely soar, even though raising rates definitely will cause its demise. How is that possible?

Fear of the Fed’s first rate increase is already priced in as the expectation for Wednesday’s Fed meeting. If the Fed raises rates, I would expect a momentary pause — a gasp of uncertainty — as investors quickly look around to see if the sky falls. Then when it doesn’t fall, they will breath a huge sigh of relief and take that as proof that the contrarians or bears were wrong. In sudden euphoric lightness of being they’ll proclaim, “We’re all right! We made it! We survived the day we have been told to fear, and the sky didn’t fall.” Worry will give way easily to euphoria, which wants to happen. The feeling of nothing can stop us now will take the day. The Fed’s plan worked; things didn’t fall apart as the prophets of doom and gloom said. We are well on our way!

But what do you know about euphoria and human beings? In my experience, euphoria is more often divorced from reality than based upon it. It skews perception of reality, and usually comes in a manic-depressive wave. First you are washed over by the crest of euphoria and then you are sucked down into the trough of despair….

The economy doesn’t crash because the Fed ends its free interest. The economy is already sinking. What crashes is the illusion of recovery. December 16, 2015, is D-day because it’s the day when reality starts to sink in….

[The market] may bounce in euphoria over the simple relief that it didn’t immediately crash when the fuel tap was shut off, but that death spasm can’t last long with nothing left to lift prices up…. you will very soon be able to look back and see that this day, Wednesday, December 16, was the turning point. (“The Epocalypse: What Will D-Day Look Like?”)

And what happened? You have to look no further than the yellow box in the graph above. I made my prediction in the period between the two deep plunges inside the yellow box. The market nudged up on December 15th right after the Fed’s announced its increase, then it shot up a lot more on the 16th; but then it stumbled and fell on the 17th – 19th. The bulls tried to rally one last time, then walked off a cliff in January in what became the biggest January plunge in market history.

But here is the part where I have to also say where I was wrong. While I was right to the day about the timing and about how the ups and downs would play out, I was greatly wrong in stating that it would lead into an economic calamity I called “the Epocalypse.” It did not.

I kept writing my blog, however, because most of it had happened exactly as I said it would, though not to the degree that I had predicted. It was more of an overstated hit than a miss. Unlike the first bet where I resisted the doom and gloom, this time I had gone too far into the glooming. Still, it was a record plunge that January, and it did become the lowest point in the period designated above as the “stealth bear market.” It was a lot closer than anyone else’s call had been.

The ghost of a crash soon to be

My final time in betting my blog (because I choose to put my money where my mouth is) was this year when I bet the economy would show serious signs of breaking down by summer and stated where the cracks would begin to show. In addition to laying out the exact fault lines that would show up in the summer, I predicted the stock market would crash in the fall or more likely in January of 2018, but no later than that.

Now it’s time for me to say, “Let’s watch what happens.” Things clearly aren’t looking good for me this time around, but hang around long enough to see how it plays out.

But first, about those major cracks that I said would show up in the summer. Three of the major cracks that I said were likely to emerge were the retail apocalypse, the beginning of a slow decline in the housing market and a crash in the auto market. All of those things became evident last summer, just when I said they would. Then, however, the hurricanes and wildfires hit. I noted the severity and spread of that destruction would probably turn the housing market and the auto market around for the next year or two.

Obviously, I cannot see hurricanes coming as rescue wagons that will thwart my predictions, but such is the risk of making economic predictions. There can be unexpected white swans, just as there can be black ones. I’m not suggesting those catastrophes are ultimately good for the nation in the long run; but just like a wartime economy, they can light the economy on fire by forcing all kinds of spending. Thus, they greatly accelerate the velocity of money as much as they accelerate the velocity of air.

I pointed out before any statistics came in that these would would postpone the events I had predicted and that had already begun to show. So, I didn’t wait to alter that prediction until after the fact. Simply put, you cannot wipe out or badly damage nearly a million houses and nearly a million automobiles without all of those having to be replaced as quickly as possible. As most were likely insured, so most would be replaced in the fall and winter and on into the spring of 2018. In fact, rebuilding so many houses will take a couple of years.

Some people would rebuild homes once the cleanup was over; as many as possible would soak up surviving houses that were already on the market (driving up the price of those limited available homes) because they needed something to live in right away. The supply of existing homes in those areas, however, would be very limited; so many people would have no choice but to relocate to other regions in order to find immediate housing. The hurricanes would create a lot of demand for both new and old homes and would fill up a lot of vacant apartments but would also press people into other states to find housing.

It’s hard, maybe impossible, to quantify how much of the housing resurgence throughout the US is due to the hurricanes as well as to the wildfires that have been destroying homes in California since last summer, but such vast swaths of destruction clearly has to have a major impact on the housing market when you are talking a sudden need for a million replacement homes and a million replacement cars. That will certainly drive up the prices for both new and used homes and cars. So, those industries, which did start to reveal signs of decline in the summer have been greatly shored up on the backs of insurance companies and US debt in the form of relief … for now.

Nevertheless, a bet’s a bet. Events that were often described by the media as apocalyptic in scale swept in out of the blue and shook the whole economy by creating a need for all kinds of replacement goods beyond just houses and cars. They stirred the pot rapidly and turned up the heat by adding fire and air, forcing the velocity of money to heat up everywhere.

However, a major part of my bet was also that the stock market would crash in the late fall or January of 2018. If that turns out as predicted, I will claim I had a lot more significant hits than misses, given that the misses have reasonable justification, too. In which case, I’ll stay in the blog-writing business. If the market doesn’t crash, however, then then the balance tips in favor of the misses, and I’m out.

Of course, my market predictions look unlikely. Something else I did not see with any clarity (but then neither did anyone else) was that the Trump rally in the stock market would last so long or climb so breathlessly high. But here it is. The anticipatory phase of the rally is all in. That’s why we have a noticeable lull now that the Trump tax cuts have been approved at a time when we might normally expect a Santa-Clause rally. There is no more pricing in happening.

Those new tax breaks will start to come in just a few days from now, and I anticipate the market will fall when those breaks become the law under which people are selling stocks. If I could revise my bet, I’d be tempted to say that fall will no longer end the rally, but the first month’s transition from anticipating to experiencing life under the new laws will likely be rough. There is probably a lot of sea to move through this passage. I cannot revise my bet, of course; but I’m just saying the unforeseen strength of the Trump rally would cause me to take some of the direness out of the fall that I anticipated if I could.

The market experienced enormous overheating (like no one has ever seen before) during the long Trump Rally, which lasted much longer than I predicted it would (but, then again, much longer and higher than even the most optimistic bulls predicted). Trump’s tax changes will definitely stimulate the market in the year ahead; but Januaries are slump months more often than boom months, and there is good reason to think investors are ready to catch their breath and secure some profits out of the market after that long, exhilarating ride — a ride that at the time was entirely speculative because it was based on tax cuts that no one could be sure would happen.

Some profit taking at the end of a year with a rampage like this would make sense. Postponing that profit taking until it can happen under much better tax rules makes even more sense … to me … in a world that increasingly makes little sense because of how rigged markets have become due to central-bank manipulation. So, I expect January to be a month of profit-taking, but will that event become bearish enough to save my blog, given that I predicted a stock market crash that would most likely happen in January?

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Marc gets right down to brass tax and addresses the controversy surrounding his recent comments in the media. A tremendous amount of time is spent tracing the rise and fall of empires and what those great societies added to our modern day world.

A cordial conversation continues with Marc delving into sound investment advice and speaks to the hypocrisy of (mostly) American pandering. In Marc’s view every government, the world over, is equally corrupt. Marc ends with the thought that once you are a prisoner of the system it is very difficult to get out.

Prisoners are good for governments as they help boost GDP. GDP, therefore, is not what one should use to measure how well a society is doing. A better indicator is the quality of living amongst the population.